


Anasazi

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [49]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Blood, F/M, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Introspection, MSR, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 03:12:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4771331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Apologies for the brief hiatus. I should be back on track again with the near-daily updates. :)</p></blockquote>





	Anasazi

_“Oh my god. Someone call the police!”_

“Damn it. Mulder? Mulder, wake up. We need to get out of here.” He’d hit his head when he fell, but as she gently touched his shoulder, he started, eyes snapping open. “Can you stand? Let me help you up.”

“Ge’way from me,” he slurred, trying and failing to sit up. He sucked in a sharp breath and then groaned as the pain in his shoulder hit him. She caught his right hand as he brought it up to touch the wound, and he yanked his hand away, glaring at her.

“Mulder, listen to me. It’s going to be all right. I’ve got supplies in the car, I just have to get you there.”

“You did this to me,” he spat. “You can go to hell.”

Knowing he was nowhere near in his right mind was the only thing that took the sting out of his words.

“Look, I know you’re angry, but if we don’t get out of here right now, things are going to get a whole lot worse very fast.” Mulder outweighed her by a good 75 pounds; it wasn’t going to be easy to get him into the car if he fought her. 

“Why, because the cops and the Bureau might find out whose side you’re _really_ on?”

She sighed, exasperated. “Mulder, if I were on anyone’s side but yours, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now, because you would be _dead_. Now please. You can hate me all you want, but we have to _go_.”

A siren whined in the distance as they stared at each other. Scully held her breath and prayed that somewhere beneath his drugged psychosis, Mulder could somehow recognize that she truly wasn’t a threat to him. 

Finally, he closed his eyes and nodded, and her breath left her in a relieved rush. “Okay. Good. Let me help you up.” 

While she hadn’t been prepared for this exact eventuality -- needing to deal with a gunshot wound -- she’d spent the better part of the afternoon gathering supplies in anticipation of driving to New Mexico. After discovering the compromised water tank in the basement of Mulder’s apartment building, she’d received a phone call from Albert Hosteen, the code talker her contact at the Navajo Nation had mentioned. He lived in New Mexico, and though it would certainly be faster to fly, Mulder was in no condition. Plus, it would be a lot harder to track them if they drove.

So she’d bailed on her meeting with Skinner, packed a bag of clothes from Mulder’s apartment and, given her suspicions as to the nature of the contamination in his water, filled a prescription for both haloperidol and lorazepam. She had packed everything into Mulder’s car (which she’d driven away from her apartment that morning) and waited for him to make his way home.

His shoulder bled freely as they crossed the parking lot, and by the time they got to the car, his shirt was soaked through. Scully popped the trunk and grabbed a towel, which she then draped over the passenger’s seat. Mulder sat down, gingerly, and she folded the towel over the top of his shoulder.

“Put pressure on that. I’ll get you something for the pain soon, but we have to get away from here first.”

The sirens were getting louder, and Scully hurried to get the car started, pealing out of the parking lot and rounding the block moments before the police cars and ambulance came to a stop in front of the building. She watched warily in the rear view mirror for several minutes, finally relaxing a little when no one seemed to follow them. Merging onto I-95, she turned to her partner.

“Hang in there, Mulder. I’m just going to get us a couple of exits up the freeway, and then I’ll find somewhere to stop and take care of your shoulder.”

“Where the hell are you taking me, Scully?” he said through gritted teeth.

“Out of danger.”

She pulled off the road at a rest area south of Woodbridge and found a place to park away from the big rigs and other vehicles. The towel and Mulder’s shirt had begun to stick to the wound, and she winced along with him when she pulled both away to get a better look. The blood had stopped flowing, at least, but there was still a lot of it, drying on his shoulder and arm. She reached toward his shirt buttons, then paused.

“I’m going to have to take this off, okay?” He nodded, letting her undo the buttons and help him remove the ruined shirt. 

“Sorry,” she murmured, carefully probing the area around the wound. It was a clean shot, through-and-through, which was about as good as you could hope for, with this sort of thing. “Hang on.”

She reached into the back seat for her med bag, withdrawing gauze and tape and a syringe. The Haldol would not so much numb the pain as knock him straight out, but it was for the best, under the circumstances; he would be able to sleep off the effects of whatever he’d been drugged with. 

“This will help you feel better,” she said, not exactly a lie.

He was asleep within moments, and she opened her door and walked around the car so she could gently recline his seat. It took several minutes to clean and dress his wound, but once she was done, the immediate situation felt a little bit less dire. Satisfied that he was going to be all right, she quickly used the restroom and got back on the road. She decided to drive as long as she could manage, with a short break a few hours before dawn. It would be safer to stop and sleep under cover of darkness, even if that meant not getting as far on the first stretch as she would have liked. 

Around 4am, somewhere in Georgia, she pulled the car off the highway and found someplace secluded to park. After double checking that Mulder’s vitals were steady, she pulled a blanket from the back seat and tucked it around him, gently brushing his hair back from his brow. He was running a fever again, almost certainly a result of the drug still in his system, but it wasn’t high enough to be a cause for concern. With a sigh, Scully set an alarm on her watch, reclined her seat and fell asleep almost instantly. 

Six-thirty came well before she was ready for it, and she rubbed her eyes groggily after fumbling to silence the beeping of her watch. She gave Mulder another dose of haloperidol and changed his bandage. The wound in his shoulder wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t infected, either. There hadn’t been time the previous night to put in any stitches; it would heal well enough with time, though she felt some measure of regret for the inevitable scar he would have. He slept on as she drove them back to the highway and continued west. 

The day was excruciatingly long, and she found herself talking to her unconscious partner in order to keep herself awake. The miles passed beneath the car’s tires as she kept up a running commentary ranging from thoughts and concerns about the case to observations about the scenery. Georgia became Alabama, then Mississippi, and Louisiana. By the time they crossed into Texas, her stomach ached from too much gas station coffee, but still she pressed on, stopping only to refuel the car about every five hours and re-dose Mulder every eight. When the sun finally set again, she allowed herself a slightly longer break, to stretch her legs a little and find a payphone.

(Her own cell phone was turned off and stashed in the trunk of the car. Barring an emergency, she wasn’t going to touch it.)

She dialed the number Mr. Hosteen had left, letting him know when he answered that she and Mulder should be arriving in Farmington by early afternoon, the next day. He agreed to meet them at a motel and take a look at the encoded files. 

They were nearly across Texas when she stopped to sleep again, risking a full five hours to rest and restore her energy. She awoke feeling nearly human, buoyed by the knowledge that they had less than 450 miles left to go. 

“I hope these answers are worth it,” she muttered to Mulder as she got them on the road once more. “We may both be out of a job after this.”

The last few hours of the drive felt interminable, but eventually she made it, exhausted but relieved. It was only because Scully and Mr. Hosteen were both much stronger than they looked that they were able to get Mulder out of the car and into the motel room. With her partner at last safe and resting comfortably on the bed, Scully brought the files in from the car and set them on the table, sinking into a chair with a deep sigh. 

“Your journey has been difficult,” Hosteen observed, and she gave a quiet, mirthless chuckle.

“You could say that.” She rubbed her eyes, then gestured to the seat across from her. “Please.” When he sat, she passed him the file folder. “I can’t thank you enough for agreeing to help translate these.”

He opened the folder and spent several minutes looking through the papers inside, with only the occasional nod giving any indication as to what he was thinking. Eventually, he met her eyes again.

“This will take me some time. There is much information here. You should rest while you are able.”

Though she couldn’t allow herself to fall asleep, locked in a room with a stranger while Mulder was still unconscious, Scully gratefully leaned back in the chair with a glance over her shoulder at her partner.

Soon. They would have answers soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for the brief hiatus. I should be back on track again with the near-daily updates. :)


End file.
